Chopped Penguin

I came across a recommendation for Deconstructing Penguins: Parents, Kids, and the Bond of Reading, and I was happy to find that our library carried it. If you have ever wanted a book that tells you how to have a conversation with your children about books, complete with word-for-word examples, this is it. It details the authors' experiences leading parent-child library book groups and shares the methods they accumulated along the way.

The main point of the book is that every written work (they touch on poetry, too) has a message the author is trying to convey. You can treat the book as a mystery, "deconstructing" it to find the hidden message, using clues such as the protagaonist, antagonist, and setting.

I especially enjoyed that the authors chose mostly classic works (Mr. Popper's Penguins, of course, and others like Charlotte's Web and Animal Farm.) The authors suggest groups of books, too, with similar themes which could be studied individually and then compared.

If you struggle to discuss books with your children, or if you are just looking for fresh insight on applying the lessons learned in literature, I highly recommend this book!

Finally, a quote I chose from the book (I always love an author who has the same pet peeve as I do!):

The theory, still in vogue, that says it doesn't matter what your child reads as long as he or she reads something is just plain wrong. If anyone tries to convince you otherwise, don't believe it. This notion springs from the assumption that kids need success - any success - to bolster their self-esteem, and if they struggle a little it might leave them feeling bad about themselves. Nothing could be more wrong-headed or insulting to children. Kids' self-esteem comes from the same source as adults' self-esteem: taking on something that seems hard at first and then doing better at it than you ever thought possible...

If you start your children off with books that are well-written, whose plots demand attention, with characters drawn with depth and wit, that is the type of reading they will come to enjoy. On the other hand, kids who are exposed to nothing but pop fiction or joke books or superficial biographies of sports heroes will become used to those and are unlikely to move to anything more challenging. During the past five years we've heard from parents again and again how difficult it has been to get children who have read nothing but pap to focus when the books assigned in class get more complicated.

You wouldn't belive someone who said it didn't matter what your child ate as long as they ate something, and then fed them candy all day. Reading is no different.